I really recommend checking out the 3.5 Tome of Battle classes as an example of good Martials. I think following that example is what One D&D should be doing.
You’re very right to bring up free medium armor and shields at level 1. Nothing the martials get comes even close to how much that’s going to boost wizards, sorcerers, and bards.
Pfft, that's silly! After all, fiction is full of wizards marching into battle with shields occupying one arm, like... Uh... well there was... Umm.... Oh wow, even a ten second google search didn't find me any good examples.
Indeed, the big leveller between the martial and spell casters has almost always been entirely about how squashy they are, any changes that give them improved durability just takes away the downside to being that pure potent magic user, and make you wonder why you would choose the half-caster classes - what do they actually get you over being the wizard? A few extra HP, maybe a somewhat useful class feature that isn't so directly replaceable by having more spells and the huge wizard spell lists. For me it also loses some of the core brilliance to D&D historically - its not meant to be perfectly evenly balanced with everyone getting much the same of everything. You get those real extreme rock paper scissors differences, and you should to keep it feeling like D&D, as that leads to great co-operative play where the x specialsit is protected and set up to shine by the team. It even gives real agency even for the low damage builds. As if you aren't all about doing damage you probably have the crowd control, healing, meat shield or lots of the out of combat bonus that makes setting up or avoid the ambush easier etc. (Though all that assumes the players actually know the rules and the DM is good enough at mixing it up that everyone can get their moments). Worth pointing out though that D&D is not and should not be a straight damage race - that isn't very high fantasy. Even the martial classes will be using their magic items, knocking folks prone, preventing their movement, etc - not every turn is about that one character doing peak damage. Also note I'm not saying D&D 5E couldn't do with some refinement and better power level management, especially at the high levels where most problems are trivially solved by a single spell... But that to me means you just need some more impressive bumps for the more purely martial classes - take enough (perhaps 15? to prevent that little dip to collect the bonus for a spellcaster) levels in them and get an extra action or something - so no more can't attack at all first turn as you can dash to get in range and still hit a bit, and those bonus action dash rogue can now really zip around for their more positional skills even more so. Would probably need some limitations similar to the haste spell, and perhaps different limitations based on which class but it rather nicely bumps up the martial to being a major threat to the spellcaster dominance at the high levels - sure you can turn them into a rat, we turn them straight into rat food...
Martial problems are not the damage (not only). The big problem, for me, is that they are one-dimensional to the extreme. Even dishing out damage, fighters, and barbarians don't contribute at all in the social or exploration parts. (and this leads to a pressure to be amazing in the aspect that they do contribute) On top of that, at mid to high levels the combat starts to be less about damage and more about crowd control or other kinds of obstacles that are not AC and HP. the genius about spellcasting is not the damage output. It's versatility and customization
Yeah, but i think thats the point, martials should be rly good at that exact thing: AC and HP. No matter how versatile the caster is or how big the crowd or how small the utility. If the martial has 100HP and the caster 25, they are on "equal" footing again. Let the caster be versatile and powerful, but pleeease make them scary to play. Make them RELY on those spellslots to stay alive.
@@1.wagner841 And also rely on the meatshield of their barbarian buddy... Though I don't entirely agree martial are that one-dimensional, though they do tend that way - which is actually a good thing as it lets your newer players get really to grips with the games complexities on the simpler to play class. But you can do way more than just punch stuff and shrug off the return hits better.
I agree in most things that you pointe but i disagree about the barbarian bit, a goodplayer can go out the steriotype of the mindless anti-social barbarian and make a sociable one, but most people don't have this think, only that one class can only do x when they can don whanever they want and fit the character.
I really disagree with this notion. Whenever someone says STR classes aren’t good for exploration/social stuff, I assume they’re just really uncreative or haven’t tried the classes out. There’s so much stuff you can do with a high strength score and it completely changes how NPCs treat you if you do it right. Being able to lift boulders, jump really high, or throw stuff far is always useful, and you don’t need to worry about spell slots! I’ll repeat that, just to make my point. YOU DONT NEED SPELL SLOTS! You can do what you’re good at as much as you want! It’s really freeing and fun, especially during role play. All this complaining is totally overblown.
@@IonicHawk that’s a good point, at higher levels these spellslots become so plentiful that it doesn’t really matter , but yes… In a Standard game Strg and athletics should be something that comes up very often in a regular adventure day, just think about it
I thought that was funny too, but also immediately realized Chris was comparing old fighter to new fighter while you were talking about the martials/caster divide. So it seems like you're getting different conclusions, but you're both asking different questions. So it's a very apples and oranges comparison. Amusing, though, and cool you got another video out of it. ;3
I agree my math also tells me martials aren't getting much of an increase in power compared to 5e --- and especially compared to casters which are getting a **massive** increase in power with OneD&D. The Martial/Caster divide was bad in 5e, and so far is looking much worse in OneD&D
@@noblesseoblige319 barely? It’s slightly different versions of the most prominent maneuvers with no resource cost. They also stack with maneuvers. Sure some of the masteries need some touching up, but this is a great start.
@@binolombardi They're worse than Maneuvers. Because a) all martials get them, not just fighters b) you could do a lot more with Maneuvers than you can with Masteries, c) you have less Masteries than Maneuvers, d) even if a Maneuver failed, you still got to add damage (with a few exceptions), while if a Mastery fails you get nothing and have to try again next turn. And even with Masteries and Maneuvers, you're still worse than a caster.
@@binolombardi it's mostly the lack of in-combat choice for me. If you're in a fight, you either have multiple weapons on hand and some clever ideas for swapping as needed, or your stuck with basically one mastery option the entire fight. For most levels, a weapon can only have the one property, so you can't easily decide to use one that would be really effective for this specific situation unless you already have that weapon with that property, your high enough level to have two in one weapon, or you weapon juggle (which has its own issues once magic items come in and there's less likelihood of having multiple weapons with similar strength). That's part of the bigger reasons people want superiority as part of the main class. Almost every single other class gets to make choices in the middle of battle. Base Fighter has "use second wind/action surge or not" for the most part. Choice adds a LOT to the play experience, from both an enjoyment stance and to the characters overall "strength". So the mastery options seem like they barely count as something close to superiority options to me
I 100% agree. I saw people patting WOTC on the back on reddit for a 20% increase in damaged for the the best 1dnd fighter compared to the 5e fighter at level 20. But their chart showed that the builds did the same damage up until around level 14 and the palidin did about 10% less damage than the best fighter. Those increases, at those levels, in full context (paladins do a ton more cool stuff than damage) made me MORE concerned than ever...
This. It's exactly my discontent. Not only that, but we are looking at solely fighter as well. Barbarians were strangely nerfed in certain areas, and rangers and paladins don't have those weapon masteries so they don't get these buffs as weapon users (not that they would look big on 2 attack characters regardless vs great weapon master and sharpshooter). Do rangers and paladins need them? Not really, but does still seemingly nerf melee gameplay if you aren't a fighter that capitalizes on 4+ attacks at lv 18+ :/
At 5th level, the one D&D paladin can: - Hit and take hits like a champ - Cure himself and others - Heal a condition on himself or others - Sense otherwordly beings - Have a magic horse - Inflicting magic radiant damage - Choose everyday between a long list of effects such as: becoming immune to fear and gaining extra HP every turn; pushing enemies with a thunderous strike; boosting up saving throws and hit modifiers; among others. At 5th level, the one D&D fighter can: - Hit and take hits like a champ, maybe a bit better than the paladin Yep, fighter need to able to do more stuff. To contribute more to the game
@@DaWishard I think they had a note in the latest playtest that Pala and Ranger would get weapon masteries. If they don't, they can just pick it up via the new feat we saw showcased. Since everything is a half-feat now anyway, it isn't even a loss in stat progression. Overall, unless something major changes based on feedback, we're going into yet another edition where only casters, half-casters and highly synergistic multiclass characters (that still rely on spells) are worth using.
The problem with martials have never been damage. They just don;t do enough cool stuff. Give them some feats of strength or abilities that allow them to do some super human stuff. Part of the fantasy of being a fighter is being a demon on the battle field. Make abilities that make the player feel that. Why do we not give barbarians jump spell as an ability? How about not weapon mastery but maneuvers baked into fighter so they aren't so basic?
This was a problem in 3rd edition, where the power progression was commonly described as "linear fighters, quadratic wizards" Near the end of 3.5 there was the Book of Nine Swords, a tome which gave us the origin of 5e battlemaster maneuvers, but in 3.5 they were basically spells for swords (they even used the same systems with different names...) By comparison to the baseline 3.5 Fighter, a Warblade from the BoNS was totally unhinged - but it really did close the gap in terms of power. Perhaps the nine swords need to be found again.
I find funny that WotC is the same company that built D&D 4E, that had SO MUCH to offer to melee and ranged fighters in several aspects to give to the martials the feeling of being an hero. Daily Exploits, Encounter Exploits, Utility Exploits and being able to HELP the other party members and not just "dishing out damage" that actually any other class can ALSO do.
Excellent video; been saying this since the moment I saw Chris' video. A couple additional points; - Extra accuracy sources are available in team play (or even solo, especially if multiclassing), which boost the -5/+10 build relative to the Graze build. For example, Advantage, Bless, Emboldening Bond, etc. At level 13 I wouldn't be surprised to have a +2 weapon also. Elven Advantage is also a good option at these levels. - Enemy AC is not always going to be high, since you don't always face single opponents. Multiple opponents have lower CRs each, which mean lower ACs (on average) - sometimes much so. These situations are massively going to favour the -5/+10 build, which helps conserve resoures for the bosses and the like. I would also argue that the -5/+10 *option* is more interesting play than *always-on* Masteries. Decisions are more interesting than non-decisions.
and this is because kobold had the deference of using champion too. Losing -5/+10 will make precision attack lose A LOT of damage and will almost surely make any kind of BM strictly worse than in 5e
I'm usually on the opposite side of the fence when you and Treantmonk have differing opinions but I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. OneDND Fighters are nice in that they get some defensive features that can stand-in for Lucky and Resilient, but there are no good offensive feats to replace them with.
People are so down for the drama that theyre missing the point that Martials need a buff to how they operate at higher levels. I main casters and I see that as a Wizard in 5e I have a fuck ton of options in combat, in exploration, and during Roleplay just through spells. Martials dont get those options outside of base stats. Like, the playtest is sounding more and more likr theyre taking advice from people who have only played from lvls 1-5 and using that to balance the game from lvls 6-20
I main half-casters, usually Rangers, and even Gloom Stalkers fall off after lvl 10 compared to fullcasters who aren't holding themselves back. And since spells represent not only most of the character features in 5e, but they're also the main feature that allows for customization to meet the needs of the campaign, meaning that you'll always be able to contribute. A Fighter or Barbarian that is in a roleplay focused campaign just doesn't have features to adapt to that. And they don't bring anything notable as dmg dealers compared to half-casters in combat focused campaigns. It's a sad state of affairs. Fighters and Barbarians were just as boring in earlier editions, but t least they weren't weak since martials had established character niches. In 5e and OneD&D, they're boring *and* weak.
@@TheTdroid I play Eldritch Knight so at lv20. I get one 4th level spell slot and maybe two 6th level spell slots if I take Magic Adept to its maximum stack. I also prefer to not be limited by two specifically named schools of magic. In short, the EK needs improvements because 5e EK has issues. Compared to a Fighter/Wizard Multiclass who can do more and better.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 EKs have a niche as Eldritch Tanks, but that's about it. There is no singleclass martial that can be stronger than a martial 5 or 6/fullcaster X multiclass.
I don't see how martials need a buff. Even lower tier martials already make it through the standard game without too much struggle. Most don't need a buff to survive. The only reason a buff is justified is they are also buffing monsters.
It was to show off all the new things the fighter can do. Weapon masteries, expert, and adept. Showing that the new features can drastically change the game, but it neglected to show if this is the same for early levels.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 So... Is WotC trying to make games shorter? Experience gain faster? Like, there is a reason why Level 10 is the norm, and Level 20 is usually a dream. And if this is supposed to still be 5E compatible, how do you reverse engineer it so past campaigns are compatible with this philosophy and design change?
For attacks: Crushing attacks (a "super attack"), counter attacks (retaliating after the effects of being targeted have been resolved), additional damage dice as default just for being a higher level to show mastery over a weapon type, ... For saving throws: Minor/major Mutilation, Choking, bleeding, Additions: Martials should be able to get more creative with tools / items, since they mostly can't rely on magic. They should more easily be able to use them, maybe be able to get some more cheaply or produce them cheaply themselves, and apply them more effectively. Poisons suck, but giving a martial the ability to preemptively add it on a weapon as a bonus action, and have it last for a couple of rounds after the first time a coated weapon is used for an attack would be amazing. The idea can be extended for "weapon oils" mimicking conventional or magic effects (i.e. works great against a certain monster type, ignores resistances, adds elemental damage, etc.). Items could be for martials what spell slots are for casters, enhancing their flexibility in combat and allowing them to respond in a variety of ways in addition to what their builds allow. I think DnD underutilizes items heavily, when just one or two new item mechanics in addition to a few items could make a huge difference - both for combat options, as well as bringing martials closer to casters.
@@stammesbruder Wow thats a lot. I think the same as you in the items idea, i love Goblin Slayer because of this. I think that items must have spell like effects, and non casters have to be able to use them more easily. Also more damage and croud control for the champion is thematic and i like it.
So, the core concept of the Champion is that it's basically entirely passive. I think if you give it active abilities you might as well scrap it entirely and make a new subclass. But, if it's going to do that, it needs to lean REALLY hard into both what it's doing and the existing Fighter kit. For the very basics I'd go for something like (in no particular order): - Recharge a Second Wind when first reduced below 1/2 health each encounter. - Recharge a Second Wind when passing all death saves (3 successes or a 20). - Recharge Action Surge when using Second Wind (if this is too strong, limit it to either: while below 1/2 health or if the d10 result is
The redesign for champion I use at my table is as follows - LVL 3: Improved Critical: 19-20 Range, Improves to 18-20 at 7th, 17-20 at 10th, 16-20 at 15th, and 15-20 at 18th. - LVL 3: Additional Fighting Style. - LVL 7: Remarkable Athlete. - LVL 7: Adaptive Style; You can now exchange one of your Fighting Styles after a Short or Long Rest. - LVL 10: Survivor ~ No longer requires Half HP; Restores Half Fighter Level + Con Modifier. Additionally, You now Recover a use of Indomitable after a Short Rest. - LVL 15: Mastery of Arms; You may now exchange one of your fighting styles when initiative is rolled. - LVL 18: Improved Survivor ~ HP Restoration occurs even if the fighter is at 0 HP; And Recover a use of Indomitable when Initiative is Rolled. The idea is to scale the most iconic feature, the improved crit range, to a point of consistency - And keeping that idea of consistency a primary focus for the Subclass. Due to being able to swap its fighting styles around, a champion can be more reliable than other martials - even if it is not as strong as them. Its also important IMO to keep it simple/forgiving to play Fighting in claustrophobic Underground and Need to block a doorway or hall? Adopt Defensive fighting style and improve your doorway dodging. Fighting in the open plains and Enemies are often too far away to charge the first round? Swap to Archery fighting style and pick them off with your bow. Entering Town and aren't expecting a fight? Swap to Superior Technique and poach the Silver Tongue Maneuver. The Regeneration from Survivor upgrade makes it so the Champion enters every fight at full health, nothing strange for a party working with good out of combat healing. And the upgrade at level 18 Makes the Champion nearly unkillable through damage, which is more than fair for a capstone IMO considering what casters get at the same level. The damage upgrade is far from anything crazy, crit fishing is still bad, but due to the consistency - This champion benefits considerably from advantage, even more so than most GWM builds (2 Barb levels?). They may also prefer different magic items, adding a die to damage is often more valuable than a bonus to hit. At mid to high level, some players have tried working both Sharpshooter and GWM on a single build
Ya, figured the point was that at BEST martials haven't changed much. They still require feats, they are doing very close to the same dmg. They still are worse than your choice of summon, life goes on.
I remember Jeremy saying why they remove the -5/+10 features in GWM & SS. is cuz he said that he want the damage to come from the main class. So the fact that they are testing the new fighter with all those feats makes no sense, as the old fighter had feats too. Testing the 6e fighter with the feats just show that feats will absolutely be MANDATORY to take, specifically the same PAM/SS/CBE/GWM feats. They either need to test both 5e and 6e fighters without any feats. Or they need to do a test with the 5e fighter with all the GWM/PAM SS/CBE feats, and the 6e fighter (((Without))) the feats. This will tell us if the Class Alone is "Dishing Out The Damage".
I've been watching you both and I agree with . . . you both. Chris explained that Fighters are dealing more damage than they were in 5e, and they are - the feats giving a +1 bonus to STR and DEX make them more appealing than a straight ASI, and they work really well with the weapon mastery builds. Your argument is that casters are still more powerful. And yes, Sorcerer's got decent buffs, wizards got a buff, and the fact that spells are just great features overall add to a spellcaster's power outside of combat. Both of you are arguing different points - and they are both correct. One DnD has buffed things up for a majority of classes - including fighters dealing more damage. However, the base issue of casters just being more powerful overall due to spells doesn't seem to have been checked by the design team.
The mutually exclusive point of disagreement you missed seems to be that Chris implied that Fighters in general are much improved overall, while Kobold claims the FLOOR is improved, but the CEILING has lowered. The latter isn't an improvement, it's a side grade.
The issue is that some amount of disbalance has to exist in order to preserve a sense of realism and fun for casters. It would be very strange in a modern era roleplaying game if your max level hacker couldn’t hack banks in order to balance them with the wages of a server at a restaurant. To a certain extent, when you complain about the options that casters have, you are bringing a similar complaint to the fore. This isn’t to say that servers should make more money, they absolutely do, by several orders of magnitude, just that there has to be reasonable limits on expectation. Casters are reality hackers, by definition. Just as it would invite a lot of questions for a max tier hacker to be unable to hack a bank, it is similarly strange to need casters to be unable to reality hack in ways that, by definition, are going to be balance breaking to some degree.
@@adammyers3453 No one is saying casters shouldn't be able to "hack reality." But you can have them be magically powerful and feel magically powerful WITHOUT absolutely shitting on martials in comparison. Just look at Pathfinder 2e, or hell, look at 5e compared to One D&D. The fact that they gave all these full spellcasters so many buffs is utterly absurd, there is NO ONE who thought spellcasters were weak or "unable to hack banks" in 5e.
@@Lardo137 Yet wizards can’t craft new spells in 5e, in that sense they can’t “hack reality”. That ability made elements of pathfinder unbalanced, precisely the elements being criticized here. In 4e, the spell wish didn’t even exist, and nearly all the “reality hacking” capabilities were turned into rituals (with no mechanism for wizards to research new spells). Yes, that is exactly what some say about wizards, and as long as spell research exists as a mechanic, there will be that gulf. If you carefully read my post, however, you will find that I am not arguing that all imbalance is ok. Actually, I agree that martials need a boosts, and need it badly. Martials should be more powerful, and I agree that the gulf in its current state is unacceptable. However, I am criticizing those who argue that wizards having access to spell research is too powerful (some actually say this). It is that specific claim that I am countering (something to note, the first attempt at giving wizards spell research is a cap on spell research potential. The calls for wizards to be denied something core to the fantasy are apparently large enough, that the designers specifically decided to add the mechanic, but only in a very narrow prescribed way [there is no other rule for PCs to craft spells]). We are complaining that wizards can have the basic ability to use their downtime to create unique new spells, despite that being a core fantasy of the class, an aspect denied for 2 editions now).
This video is a breath of fresh air. Love that you address/update the information and the opinion of the material. Keep up the amazing work Pack Tactics!
You bring up a good point. We do not know how monsters will be revised. It’s clear that the monsters in the Monster Manual are weak as heck compared to the later builds after Tosha’s, etc. after level 2 I basically have to homebrew the heck out of everything or sometimes double the amount of baddies to make my players consider the fight worth their time.
Treantmonk has some quality information in his videos, but good gravy are they a slog to sit through. I use them to help me fall asleep for naps more than anything.
Hot take: while WotC screws over the warlock, partially, the solution for many of the problems of the martial/caster balance is to use pact magic esque spell progression. If instead of having more and more and more and more spell slot, the spell slots evolved with the class, casters would still be the cannon, but with only one bullet. Making casters to have, IDK, 6-8 spell slots and they advance by leveling up one or two spell slots per level, then no more shield spamming, no more fireball spamming, and no more 6 encounter a day, while at the same time retaining the fantasy of powerful magic.
They seriously need to make shield add your spellcasting ability modifier instead of a flat +5 and only for the turn you used it. That way, it's still a defense against multiattack (unlike defensive duelist sad) but it's not protection for the whole round
@@saeedrazavi4428 or give Martials and option to do the Parry reaction many NPCs have, where they add their PB to their AC (in my game i have a shield type that doesnt give you the +2, but gives you this ability)
I too recommend Treantmonk's Trickery Cleric guide. It's the first videos I watched from him, when all the other guides were essentially "Use another subclass".
I love Treantmonk's videos. His homebrew fix to Monk is quite good, and I actually got to briefly play it. But I admit I was confused by how he presented the Champion fighter in the playtest 5 packet, because it seemed to be promoting them as good. Yet, they appeared to be barely better than in 5e currently, where they're wildly sub-optimal. I was also surprised that he didn't provide a DPR chart from 1-13. Picking only level 13 seemed... tone deaf to the situation, and also a bit cherry-picking a good result. I know there will probably be tricks and tech we don't know about yet, and we shouldn't oversell our ability to completely assess the game. Maybe crit fishing will become more powerful somehow, or martials will have unique synergy with new features and abilities. I can already tell that the extra Nick attack across the board will make a huge difference once martials have access to any light weapon with on-hit damage. Even 1d4 fire damage on a hit becomes significant when you're potentially hitting with it twice per turn and STILL swinging a Halberd twice with a Cleave or shooting a Hand Crossbow twice, all at level 5. But now Fighters have to juggle weapons to achieve this, which also means their performance TANKS if their DM isn't throwing myriad optimal weapons at the Fighter alone. They would need three magic weapons of specific types by level 5 or they get dunked. All this, to still be outshone by casters who are simple, straightforward and don't rely on any magic items at all. Martials need some serious love and BOLD buffs that take risks during playtest while the strongest spells see small and thoughtful nerfs. Not some cautious, hesitant tweaking to make martials more 'fun' while casters get sent to the moon by comparison. No matter how cool or thematic martial abilities are, it's not going to matter when casters by comparison are walking all over them. Those early levels are only going to look good because that's when martials are at their strongest by comparison AND because most of the best spells at early levels are to buff and enable martials to perform vastly better than they normally would with Goodberry soaking chip damage, Bless/Faerie Fire creating huge DPR gains and Sleep swinging the action economy and setting up easy hits with free crits. As soon as those spell slots become better used on Shield, Absorb Elements and Pass Without Trace, martials fall behind even more since they're (usually) no longer the focus of the casters' strategy. Push might help a little, but it would require a LOT of team cooperation and building. My experience is that MOST tables do not pick their classes and spells around a cooperative team fight strategy.
I think that weapon masteries are fun complications that do not address the real problems with martial classes. They are really just a small boost to the weapons themselves. What the martial classes need are more feature slots to allow them to progress harder and faster. What I am doing at my table currently is I have gotten rid of "Extra Atrack" as a feature and made it a Game Rule. Now you gain an extra attack at the same levels a cantrip scales up, assuming you are proficient with that weapon. This is a boost to all martials or mixed martial classes but more importantly frees up the level 5 feature slot to become a more interesting feature that could give classes a defining thing to do as they advance into the next tier of play. Currently, I have not gone through and designed a feature for every class. For now generally, have it be an extra ASI/feat opportunity. I have designed something specifically for fighter due to them having more extra attack features, because I have given all characters 4 attacks at level 20.
It is not a Nerf, it is just less optimization focused, which is actually perfect for the groups I play with, power feats, should be free or just not exist. They limit Martial Fantasy, but I completely agree Martials need much more, basically, I like the direction, but I think they didn't push enough
I gotta say i really love this basically back and forth of you and Chris. It's very respectful and the different perspectives are useful. Keep up the good work!
the reason for level 13 is that most games don't go past that level, so it is a better example of where the players tend to cap out at, it was explained back in a video where he goes over his methodology. But I do agree that testing it at multiple levels is a good die and when I used to do this kind of thing in 3e I would usually take 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th level for my data sets.
If it wasn’t obvious, the reason Chris is picking L13 is that is the level the champion gets the ability to pick between two weapon master abilities at the time of hit. This lets him pick either cleave or graze depending on whether it is a hit or a miss, which adds quite a bit of dependable damage and average damage overall. To see this, what we really need is a optimized D&D one vs D&D 5e champion builds over a bunch of levels.
The argument is there that the slight buff to mid-level Fighters/Barbarians in terms of damage makes single-classing in them more valuable than before, sure. But as said, it's an incredibly flawed argument for multiple reasons: 1) The buff to DPR is tied partially to the change in the feat system than anything done by the base class (free feat at level 1 in addition to the bonus feat from human, higher level feats all being half-ASIs). 2) The buffs are only really there at higher levels (10+) that a lot of campaigns don't tend to reach and is just to damage, which really wasn't all that much of an issue to begin with, which ties into the biggest point... 3) The argument only considers the comparison between martial classes or a martial class to a previous iteration of the same class, rather than the real issue of comparing it to *every* other class. You can argue that comparing a fighter to a wizard or barbarian to sorcerer is an apples and oranges situation, but it's a comparison that will come up in the playerbase - they are both still fruit after all - and to ignore that side of the argument only works against the point being made and doesn't work to decrease the divide. Because really, who cares about a minor DPR uptick for a fighter/barbarian compared to the 5e versions at 13th+ level when wizards, sorcerers, and clerics too (in case people forgot) got massive new abilities and buffs with little to no nerfs to their abilities and not just at level 10 and beyond but in some cases right out of the starting gates?
At level 13 playtest Warlock's highest spell slot is 4 so they can up cast hex to 2d6. Between them and their simulacrum that's 14 less DPR putting them well behind the fighter numbers. Also there's a pretty heavy resource cost to even reach those numbers.
Honestly, I think the core issue between martial and caster balance is that there are certain high level spells that are bananas. Simulacrum is casually mentioned in the video because Simulacrum is incredibly, game-bendingly broken when allowed to operate unchecked and the theoretical checks on it get hand-waved in dpr discussions because it's really hard to factor in gold costs and enemy dispel magic on a spreadsheet. When it's working it does things to the action economy that will get you investigated by the Hague. Simulacrum, and the handful of similarly unhinged spells, are at the core of the perceptions about how vast the martial/caster divide is.
Even low and mid level spells are bananas. Silence can hard-counter certain enemies. Fireball can easily deal more than 50 dmg if placed well. Banishment can remove triple digit hp from a fight on a charisma save. Spirit Guardians is decent DPR, slows enemies and frees up your action economy to do things like Dodge for better tanking. Pass Without Trace can not only let you do stealth missions, but also generate surprise rounds worth hundreds of dmg. Stoneskin will let a caster turn anyone into a Barbarian for an hour. And this is just a drop in the bucket.
@@TheTdroid As someone who likes playing a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass, Shield is a first level reaction to boost your AC by five for a whole round, Healing Word is a first level bonus action to raise a dying party member at range, and Misty Step is a second level bonus action teleportation. Hypnotic Pattern is a fight ender.
Thank you for mentioning the dps comparison for Level 5! Calculating level 13? How is my party carrying me for that long with such low early numbers? Martials are stuck relying on DMs giving quality magic items early.
Martials need some form of trait, feat to choose and/ or have baked into the base class ( even half classes/ casters to a degree ). Sub classes can amplify/ specialize. What I mean of WHAT kind of traits/ feats???? Resistance to one or more tupes of magic/ elemental/ psionic attacks, heck even immunity in a particular martial/ half class higher levels vs one or more magic mumbojumbos. Also counter/ reflect/ redirect magic traits/ feats with some form of natural/ non magical armor, weapons. Mirrors anyobe? Magic/ psionic nullifiers etc.
(Quick note - we are always talking damage and not the issues with skills and defense and support and the other Pilar’s of play that mages can trivialize while others struggle. We never should forget how powerful these things are or we risk messing up and printing a Twilight powerhouse… oh that was them and note no lots of damage 😂. Let’s talk some damage) The increasing the min and mean and decreasing the maximum is really common in this play test. The reason they are doing it is to limit the swing that characters have in damage output that can surprise DMs and make the creature less challenging then the CR says they should be. (That is them but me I know this is stupid - Dragon brained you know). Chris is right and so are you. The biggest issue I noted over there (no one noticed there or here because .. wall of text) the biggest issue of that people will not see any increase in the numbers because it is hidden and does not appear when a person looks at a maximum result. Also, an issue even greater then standard damage but more along the line of loosing play styles, multiplayer is not going to be keeping players around since it will be VERY un useful in the standard game that does by level 10. And in the end all of this is to make it so that they can calculate CR easier. Well that is my E for your video. Don’t forget to feed the gator and keep enjoying your pizza.
I always love videos where you and Chris talk about each other. I think you're not like super close friends, but I really enjoy watching your dynamic as friendly optimizer channel neighbors.
Honestly I’m not too worried about martial damage. Damage is neat, but my problem with martials is that they just aren’t interesting to play. They are too limited, especially when you see what other systems do with them - not just pathfinder, but older editions of dnd as well (4e in particular comes to mind)
I would love a rework of martials, but we're clearly not getting that from OneD&D. So the only thing left is putting out good numbers and they just don't =( Guess we're in for another decade of Ranger and Paladin being the only martial characters worth using.
My god nothing infuriates me more than seeing what they did to Martial Classes going out of 4e. Good friend of mine just shrugged, dropped playing D&D at all and outright told me "I refuse to go from having Fighter finally mean something to being trash again." This is a man who went through 3.5 up to Book of Nine Swords, rejoiced and his only lament was that actual Fighter would never be worth playing when Warblade existed. Then saw 4e's Fighter and literally never did the same build twice because he kept setting up new combos within that singular class he enjoyed playing. He outright went to Warlord because it was a fun way to 'be Fighter, again' and did more crazy non-sense with that than anyone expected was possible. Ended up getting the Martial Power books and continuing to put together new builds with just Fighter and/or Warlord until seeing 5e and sending me that classic meme. "Look how they massacred my boy!" from the Godfather. I couldn't blame him for saying 'screw this' after seeing an edition where Fighter finally meant something other than 'NPC/Mob'. 'OneD&D' is essentially doubling down on pushing casters to obscene power, Wizards beyond 3.5 for Erathis's sake! While leaving the martial classes to lick at crumbs like a whipped dog.
@@Sorain1 It's a shame. And I don't get it; so many other systems manage to give different classes different things they're good at, so why not D&D? I think a lot of the problem is actually the community and the backlash to 4e. 4e seems to have been a poor system to run at tabletop, but they had a lot of good ideas I wish were brought into 5e, like clearly and narrowly defined class roles. With 12 base classes, it is a big problem to have as much overlap as we do now.
Martials need more free feats and more feats to choose from. Not necessarily to boost their damage but to boost their utility and control on the battlefield and dare I say it... Off the battlefield. Since casters get entire lists of class features to choose from (because thats what spells actually are) martials should get the same treatment. Instead of spell lists they need ability lists. And some of those abilities need to scale with level, if not through damage then through utility. Cleave is a good template for these types of martial feats to start, but I'm also thinking stuff like Barbarians should get bonus action shoves and headbutts. Fighters could get shoves and trips as bonus actions. Any kickboxer can tell you getting a few good low kicks in should halve your movement speed or even stop you from walking all together. And called shots have been a new player favorite that is not in the game but should be. You 1000% can actually attack the eyes of someone. Especially in a grapple. Getting more bonusses to hit would also greatly help and fit with being an experienced martial character. Being in range of a DnD martial should be TERRIFYING for any foe. Their primary drawbacks should be that they need to get up close to be effective, so how effective they are should be amplified as a result.
In my expierence in a low to mid optimised table, martials do more single target damage, but even barely optimied caster can take out a few enemies out of the fight with a good timed spell. That is why ONE D&D changes in the latest UA frustrate my so much. Yes fighter has a little more to do besides just rolling to hit, but wizard is on a whole another level. They really need to rethink those changes.
Class feature concept for Fighters (and Barbarians, but mostly for Fighters) Vicious Onslaught: allows the character to perform any number of attacks on a single enemy, the downside being that each attack performed this way will reduce AC by 1 for the remainder of the round. To perform a vicious onslaught in a timely manner, roll damage once, and roll a number of d20s equal to the number of attacks, then just count how many beat the target's AC and multiply the damage roll by that number. This ability may only target one enemy per turn, and can only be performed with a melee weapon. This idea stems from the fact that, if you are fully committed to attacking a single target, literally anyone can do more attacks than a level 1 fighter IRL. remember that 1 turn is 6 seconds (which in a fight viewed through the lens of adrenaline, is a reeeeeaaaaaaallllllyy loong time.) realistically, fighters should have a lot more attacks (at least when that's all that they're doing.) Moving, drinking potions, etc. can eat up a lot of that time, but when fighters get in their desired positions, most do nothing but attack for their whole turn, and at low levels, having a single attack that may or may not hit, meanwhile casters are able to do things that deal a minimum of half damage whether the roll succeeds or not, is dumb.
I still believe Martials should have social utility. Like Barbarians depending on their subclass being considered by the people as protectors, leaders, or monsters. Or Fighters being considered Rock Stars, Generals, Leaders, etc. Imagine a Totem Barbarian adding their STR mod. to their charisma checks if the NPC lives on the forest or skirts of a town. While a Champion Fighter has their STR/DEX mod. to any charisma check if the NPC is on the heart of a City or against soldiers.
Fantastic video, love the methods you use here. Only small thing I disagree with is the 100% charger uptime. There will be times when there are other nearby enemies that can punish your movement with AoOs, and you won't want to risk the extra damage, especially if it comes with riders. I still think it deserves ~80% uptime or so, but just because you can use it every turn doesn't mean you'll want to.
I genuinely feel they should have just given all fighters battlemaster maneuvers on top of masteries. Technically all warriors get masteries. But the others get something on top of masteries (rage and ki). Give the fighters manuevers!
Player: I want to eat pizza DM: okay you buy a pizza, that's 1 silver Player: is it delicious DM: oh it's delicious alright... Player: ... DM: you take 1d4 fire damage from eating it too fast
Aside from it being unlucky, I was actually okay with his picking level 13. Our campaigns generally end around the 12-13 level range, so that wasn't too high. I do agree with you that seeing the numbers at a couple of other points below 13 would have been more informative and might have even told a different story. And running the numbers for range would have been nice too, especially because the fighter (so far) is the only one with ranged mastery.
Level 13 is unhelpful without context. Ideally, Treantmonk should've done lvl 3, 5 and 13. If he was only going to do one of those, it should've been 5, since that is the number that is most likely to define most of your adventure.
It feels like the issue is that you guys were looking at different things. He's comparing old to new which is clearly a buff. But didn't really compare how it bridged the martial caster divide.
To be fair, how it bridges the martial - caster divide is literally the only thing that matters since the new Fighter / Barb isn't competing with the old ones. They're competing with new casters and half-casters.
I’m glad someone is finally acknowledging how bad ranged fighters are in OD&D. I get that ranged combat is inherently better than melee but it’s still leagues below casting.
In practice the fighter built for range with crossbow expert will still do more damage on average because of all the times the enemy will be out of range of melee. Maybe they just figure that most spellcasters have much better things to do than deal out damage so it won't matter if they technically can do more damage since they probably won't be?
Not to mention the amount of damage melee takes just in the process of getting there. Not to mention how much control spells/abilities hurt melee way more than ranged.
Short of a complete rework of how martial and caster characters work (kinda like 4e did. Strange how 4e seems to have solved most of the issues we're having today and then got rejected by the community), there isn't much we can do with martial characters that don't have spellcasting beyond giving them better numbers. And 50 dpr at lvl 13 for a character that has nothing but damage is worthless. It only seems impressive because we're coming out of an edition where characters without spellcasting got little to no love from WotC. The funny thing is that Rangers were underwhelming in the 2014 PHB, but I'd still rank a singleclass Hunter with only PHB options higher than any singleclass Fighter build, even with the newer subclasses, as a more overall useful character. And Rangers have been buffed several times since then to get them more up to par with Paladins, be it by offering better class features, more powerful spells and one of the strongest martial subclasses in the game. Buffs that were needed, mind you. But the classes without magic hasn't gotten anything like that and they needed it more than anyone.
My games START at level 10 (level 5 at the earliest) and it allows martials to be played and fun multiclasses and fun backstories and more fun everything. I have a sorcerer barbarian dwarf, a paladin fighter rune night fairy. All sorts of stuff. I couldnt imagine a more fun way to play. Still allows for going through 10 whole levels but gives the powerful stuff at the end.
Hear me out right, I think somone once said something about fighter that made me think about how it could be improved. Combined with someone recently pointing out that a big flaw in martial is lack of versatility or choice, and that they're very one dimensional, I had an idea. What if all fighter subclasses we just battlemaster and whatever other subclass they get? Maybe expand the maneuvers to be more versatile, with stronger ones unlocking as you level up? I think that would fix a significant number of their problems, and give the players far more choice, even if it doesn't fix them, its a relatively easy boost in power that closes the gap significantly.
One thing that kinda worries me about weapon masteries is that we only get a handful here and only the fighter can mix and match them. I feel like this doesn't leave the door open to add more masteries down the line and one of the big things martials are lacking right now is choices. Meanwhile casters are getting new spells in almost every other book
@@Hazel-xl8in , He also did some Star Trek movies before he did Star Wars... in those movies he also increased the power and size of all ships... so that the New Enterprise in those movies was nearly twice the size of the Enterprise in the Original Series... despite his movies being set ~20 years prior to the Original Series, lol. He also destroyed a planet in Star Trek too... he really loves his planet killing weapons.
5:00 I never thought about triggering Charge by "ringing around the rosie", but RAW it does work (the fact I didn't even consider it makes me think it's not RAI, but I don't know)! That's interesting.
I do think that perhaps there is room for fighter to grow with different subclasses. A champion's damage may be slightly better, but it's also got a lot of predominantly tanky abilities that focus on staying alive. The base fighter seems a decent framework to add subclasses on, and have those subclasses impact how they play more than feats do. If they release a new subclass and call it "Skirmisher" or something, and suddenly they can dual-wield extremely well and make extra attacks with their attack action, they could make it potent enough to deal with what seems like low damage right now.
The only way I could comprehend calculating Topple is by calculating what each combinations of dice roll (Ex. The damage for a 16 on attack roll and an 8 on their save then a 18 on your next attack) then averaging those number. But that seems like a lot of work 😭
Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have stronger melee builds out of casters that martials again. Barbarians are kinda interesting being able to use strength for perception which is hilarious to me though😂
With the 13th level fighter feature, it looks like you choose the weapon mastery feature before you know if you hit (it might even be before you roll, but hard to tell because of the bad wording) which means you won't get full benefits of cleave and graze (or any two features)
Wouldn't the warlock do better damage by casting Simulacrum on the fighter instead of themselves? Of course, that would be a dick move. "You think you do more damage than me? Ok now I do my damage AND your damage"
We need monsters that consume spell slots and tailor an entire campaign around them. If the supposed weakness of casters is 'running out of gas' then we have to capitalize on that
I would like to point out the following: Kobold forgot the fact that fighters get a feat at lvl 5 amd the variant human from Onednd also gets two feats instead of one. Do the same comparison with a piercer fighter, which does add an additional damage die on crits and allows for a weapon dice reroll once per turn. Kobold also forgot the new feats are all half feats, meaning sharpshooter, CE, and Piercer increase Dex by +1. And with the OneDnD human having the ability to put a +2 in its dex stat, statting with a 15 from point buy, and getting +3 from the feats, the new fighter gets a 20 at lvl 4, with one feat to do whatever with. Also isnt the accuracy loss to sharpshooter 25%, not 20%? And advantage gain being 25% and not 20% if we start at a base 65% chance to hit at lvl 5 (with a 16 in dex I may add), then wouldnt the SS drop the accuracy to 40? And the adv increase the accuracy to 80? Technically 90% accuracy with the 20 in dex from the other feats. The calculations just feel wrong, but I also may be wrong. All that being said, the martial and casters do still have a divide, albeit the divide is only as strong as you make it. Reduce magic items given to casters, increase magic items given to martials, reduce free-moving gold as that is the biggest gate for a wizard to achieve its godlike status, and tweak the masteries a bit so they are actually better. Also make power attacks just a thing that players can do instead of needing a feat to do it. That should help minimize the divide some.
@@gloryrod86 not to mention of we take into consideration of how many turns it would take to make a simulacrum, and multiply the damage of the champion fighter, which would be 6000 turns times 50 damage (low balling the number, then the warlock would need to make up for 300.000 damage, which with the 10 points of difference that the combo would give the warlock, they would need to eldritch blast a total of 30.000 turns, which means they would need to blast for a total of 5 hours, and that is if they can keep Hex up for that long and the simulacrum does not die before then. Not to mention simulacrums do not get their spells back ever and have half the health of the original.
I hate to say this since it's been said to death, but all martials need some kind of answer to spells. A lot of people don't seem to understand that spells are basically additional features for casters in of themselves. each spell a caster can prepare is an additional feature that martial characters don't have access to. add to that, casters are also going to have a few higher mental stats then your martials are likely to have since martials are going to need either STR or DEX for for combat. CON is also one you might want to have at least a +2 in. but the Casters get to bank on either INT, WIS, or CHA which are great for roll play. I'd say wizards needs something similar to the Battle Master maneuvers and apply them to all martial classes. honestly even then that won't be enough but it's at least a step in the right direction.
Respectfully, the problem with fighters is NOT their DPR. Its their verstitility in comparison to casters. Rather than giving the fighter classes non-magical skills comparable to casters (or making them equally available) they limit fighters or force most strong builds to have to dip into cantips and spellcasting. When something like the rangers spells could have easily just been considered "fighting techniques." Allow a fighter to do a swirling iron whirlwind attack and strike all targets surrounding him (Sword Burst). Alllow the Fighter to move so quickly that they become difficult to target (Blur spell, etc). Just following the Battle Master approach but standardizing it for the entire class and greatly improving the power of fighting techniques would make them more appealing and fun to play. The PROBLEM with the Fighter is at high level the Mage can do 100 things and the fighter just does more damage and is tougher. Its very, very, very, clear (especially from the subclasses) that martial classes are not as favored by the designers as the magic users. Very little thought goes into them.
I've said a lot that it often feels like casters and martials are playing two different genres of game. Casters, especially high level ones, are out there playing a high-flying fantasy adventure anime game whereas martials are playing a gritty realistic survival game where you gotta remember to fuckin sharpen your sword with a whetstone or it'll break. If high level wizards can summon meteors, I want fighters who can cut a meteor in half. I want barbarians who can catch the meteor and throw it back. I want rogues who can snipe the wizard from the other side of the city before he finishes the spell. It's stupid that the coolest thing WotC can think of when it comes to living out the fantasy of being a peerless warrior is being able to swing your sword three times in six seconds instead of just two.
I guess I'm spoiled if most campaigns you've played end at level 10 because mine have started at 3 and 5 and we plan on ending at 20 before starting new campaigns (probably not using One D&D)
What I find out discussing is that casters out perform martials in things as jump's and run distance. Also mele should do more DMG that range to be balanced. Also some skills for Shields whood be nice.
Just do what they do in pf2e, make martial have +2 to hit compared to casters. Also have control spells weaken monsters instead of just turning them off.
@@Rubisco2510 I forgot about that. I've only played an echo knight once and it was a lot of fun. It does not put out the consistent damage most casters do, though.
@@stevenbyers8747 the cookie-cutter way of doing damage as a Fighter is to find a way to get advantage and combine that with -5/+10 feats. For example as Barbarian 2 echo knight 6 you could attack at advantage 7 times each hit doing a lot of damage. However, it was a bit restirictive in weapon choice and wasn't the best design.
I'm more of an Eldritch Knight guy myself. Sure, no innate dpr boosts, but at least I get spells and cantrips to diversify what my Fighter can do, and I can build a very sturdy defensive character.
I think the comparison with a lazy warlock with Simulacrum is a bit misleading. If that warlock wanted to do better, he should copy the fighter with Simulacrum, not himself. The DPR would be higher. I think it's telling that if all you want to do is damage that doesn't cost any resources (simulacra don't regain spell slots, so that doesn't sound like a bad idea at all), then copying the fighter and not yourself is a better choice. But, PackTactics mentionned it in a previous video, but it's still really hard to actually evaluate whether the martial/caster divide has grown narrower or wider until we know what changes they're making to spells.
I think i heard you giving that solution before: Just give fighters more (superiority ?) dices to roll with weapons, or some extra resistances or movement. At least fighters should be harder to kill than casters?
Marital should get more physical habilities to do in or out of combat. Stuff like special movements, jumps, manuvers etc Just like those martial heroes from movies
The biggest issue between balance of martials vs casters is campaign early/mid/late campaign scaling. And that the players want two separate things out of dnd. My opinion. Scale caters and martials the same though-out the campaign. Because most don’t get that far and players shouldnt have to wait soo long to play
I did have a breath weapon after having that pizza btw. I was like a dragon!
#descended_from_dragons
Eww line of acid
I really recommend checking out the 3.5 Tome of Battle classes as an example of good Martials. I think following that example is what One D&D should be doing.
@@prinnyEXEgarlic actually.
Must've been one spicy meat-a-ball
You’re very right to bring up free medium armor and shields at level 1. Nothing the martials get comes even close to how much that’s going to boost wizards, sorcerers, and bards.
I'm gonna petition to ban that at my tables so fast if it goes to publication
Pfft, that's silly! After all, fiction is full of wizards marching into battle with shields occupying one arm, like... Uh... well there was... Umm.... Oh wow, even a ten second google search didn't find me any good examples.
mainly because they get basically nothing from 1st level feats. Which doesnt help
Indeed, the big leveller between the martial and spell casters has almost always been entirely about how squashy they are, any changes that give them improved durability just takes away the downside to being that pure potent magic user, and make you wonder why you would choose the half-caster classes - what do they actually get you over being the wizard? A few extra HP, maybe a somewhat useful class feature that isn't so directly replaceable by having more spells and the huge wizard spell lists.
For me it also loses some of the core brilliance to D&D historically - its not meant to be perfectly evenly balanced with everyone getting much the same of everything. You get those real extreme rock paper scissors differences, and you should to keep it feeling like D&D, as that leads to great co-operative play where the x specialsit is protected and set up to shine by the team. It even gives real agency even for the low damage builds. As if you aren't all about doing damage you probably have the crowd control, healing, meat shield or lots of the out of combat bonus that makes setting up or avoid the ambush easier etc. (Though all that assumes the players actually know the rules and the DM is good enough at mixing it up that everyone can get their moments).
Worth pointing out though that D&D is not and should not be a straight damage race - that isn't very high fantasy. Even the martial classes will be using their magic items, knocking folks prone, preventing their movement, etc - not every turn is about that one character doing peak damage. Also note I'm not saying D&D 5E couldn't do with some refinement and better power level management, especially at the high levels where most problems are trivially solved by a single spell... But that to me means you just need some more impressive bumps for the more purely martial classes - take enough (perhaps 15? to prevent that little dip to collect the bonus for a spellcaster) levels in them and get an extra action or something - so no more can't attack at all first turn as you can dash to get in range and still hit a bit, and those bonus action dash rogue can now really zip around for their more positional skills even more so. Would probably need some limitations similar to the haste spell, and perhaps different limitations based on which class but it rather nicely bumps up the martial to being a major threat to the spellcaster dominance at the high levels - sure you can turn them into a rat, we turn them straight into rat food...
@@ChronoShadow69maybe some orders of Knights Radiant from Stormlight? Some of them are very wizard-y and I think they all have full plate.
Oh no, he was affected by the Heat Pizza spell :(
No saving throw, just damage
There is a saving throw... wisdom to figure out the pizza is too hot to eat. Kobold failed his saving throw.
@@aralornwolf3140 Dexterity to spit it out fast enough lol but that would only be a save for half damage
Martial problems are not the damage (not only). The big problem, for me, is that they are one-dimensional to the extreme.
Even dishing out damage, fighters, and barbarians don't contribute at all in the social or exploration parts. (and this leads to a pressure to be amazing in the aspect that they do contribute)
On top of that, at mid to high levels the combat starts to be less about damage and more about crowd control or other kinds of obstacles that are not AC and HP.
the genius about spellcasting is not the damage output. It's versatility and customization
Yeah, but i think thats the point, martials should be rly good at that exact thing: AC and HP. No matter how versatile the caster is or how big the crowd or how small the utility. If the martial has 100HP and the caster 25, they are on "equal" footing again. Let the caster be versatile and powerful, but pleeease make them scary to play. Make them RELY on those spellslots to stay alive.
@@1.wagner841 And also rely on the meatshield of their barbarian buddy...
Though I don't entirely agree martial are that one-dimensional, though they do tend that way - which is actually a good thing as it lets your newer players get really to grips with the games complexities on the simpler to play class. But you can do way more than just punch stuff and shrug off the return hits better.
I agree in most things that you pointe but i disagree about the barbarian bit, a goodplayer can go out the steriotype of the mindless anti-social barbarian and make a sociable one, but most people don't have this think, only that one class can only do x when they can don whanever they want and fit the character.
I really disagree with this notion. Whenever someone says STR classes aren’t good for exploration/social stuff, I assume they’re just really uncreative or haven’t tried the classes out. There’s so much stuff you can do with a high strength score and it completely changes how NPCs treat you if you do it right. Being able to lift boulders, jump really high, or throw stuff far is always useful, and you don’t need to worry about spell slots! I’ll repeat that, just to make my point. YOU DONT NEED SPELL SLOTS! You can do what you’re good at as much as you want! It’s really freeing and fun, especially during role play. All this complaining is totally overblown.
@@IonicHawk that’s a good point, at higher levels these spellslots become so plentiful that it doesn’t really matter , but yes… In a Standard game Strg and athletics should be something that comes up very often in a regular adventure day, just think about it
I thought that was funny too, but also immediately realized Chris was comparing old fighter to new fighter while you were talking about the martials/caster divide. So it seems like you're getting different conclusions, but you're both asking different questions. So it's a very apples and oranges comparison. Amusing, though, and cool you got another video out of it. ;3
I agree my math also tells me martials aren't getting much of an increase in power compared to 5e --- and especially compared to casters which are getting a **massive** increase in power with OneD&D. The Martial/Caster divide was bad in 5e, and so far is looking much worse in OneD&D
Screw magic. 😤
Sincerely,
A Barbarian. 😒
I just want fighter to have superiority dice built in the main class...
That’s what masteries are.
@@binolombardi barely, and most of the warriors get them as well, instead of just fighters. Fighters just get more until later levels
@@noblesseoblige319 barely? It’s slightly different versions of the most prominent maneuvers with no resource cost. They also stack with maneuvers.
Sure some of the masteries need some touching up, but this is a great start.
@@binolombardi They're worse than Maneuvers. Because a) all martials get them, not just fighters b) you could do a lot more with Maneuvers than you can with Masteries, c) you have less Masteries than Maneuvers, d) even if a Maneuver failed, you still got to add damage (with a few exceptions), while if a Mastery fails you get nothing and have to try again next turn.
And even with Masteries and Maneuvers, you're still worse than a caster.
@@binolombardi it's mostly the lack of in-combat choice for me. If you're in a fight, you either have multiple weapons on hand and some clever ideas for swapping as needed, or your stuck with basically one mastery option the entire fight.
For most levels, a weapon can only have the one property, so you can't easily decide to use one that would be really effective for this specific situation unless you already have that weapon with that property, your high enough level to have two in one weapon, or you weapon juggle (which has its own issues once magic items come in and there's less likelihood of having multiple weapons with similar strength).
That's part of the bigger reasons people want superiority as part of the main class. Almost every single other class gets to make choices in the middle of battle. Base Fighter has "use second wind/action surge or not" for the most part. Choice adds a LOT to the play experience, from both an enjoyment stance and to the characters overall "strength".
So the mastery options seem like they barely count as something close to superiority options to me
I 100% agree. I saw people patting WOTC on the back on reddit for a 20% increase in damaged for the the best 1dnd fighter compared to the 5e fighter at level 20. But their chart showed that the builds did the same damage up until around level 14 and the palidin did about 10% less damage than the best fighter. Those increases, at those levels, in full context (paladins do a ton more cool stuff than damage) made me MORE concerned than ever...
This. It's exactly my discontent. Not only that, but we are looking at solely fighter as well. Barbarians were strangely nerfed in certain areas, and rangers and paladins don't have those weapon masteries so they don't get these buffs as weapon users (not that they would look big on 2 attack characters regardless vs great weapon master and sharpshooter). Do rangers and paladins need them? Not really, but does still seemingly nerf melee gameplay if you aren't a fighter that capitalizes on 4+ attacks at lv 18+ :/
At 5th level, the one D&D paladin can:
- Hit and take hits like a champ
- Cure himself and others
- Heal a condition on himself or others
- Sense otherwordly beings
- Have a magic horse
- Inflicting magic radiant damage
- Choose everyday between a long list of effects such as: becoming immune to fear and gaining extra HP every turn; pushing enemies with a thunderous strike; boosting up saving throws and hit modifiers; among others.
At 5th level, the one D&D fighter can:
- Hit and take hits like a champ, maybe a bit better than the paladin
Yep, fighter need to able to do more stuff. To contribute more to the game
@@DaWishard I think they had a note in the latest playtest that Pala and Ranger would get weapon masteries. If they don't, they can just pick it up via the new feat we saw showcased. Since everything is a half-feat now anyway, it isn't even a loss in stat progression.
Overall, unless something major changes based on feedback, we're going into yet another edition where only casters, half-casters and highly synergistic multiclass characters (that still rely on spells) are worth using.
@tlemgr Okay so did you actually do it or are you just saying its probs wrong?
Bc ur so good at math. Trust me bro.
Yeah, you are just talking crap to be a troll. Either make a point, backed up by reasoning or alternative math, or shut up. @tlemgr
The problem with martials have never been damage. They just don;t do enough cool stuff. Give them some feats of strength or abilities that allow them to do some super human stuff. Part of the fantasy of being a fighter is being a demon on the battle field. Make abilities that make the player feel that. Why do we not give barbarians jump spell as an ability? How about not weapon mastery but maneuvers baked into fighter so they aren't so basic?
The damage honestly is just the easiest thing highlight.
The one bit martials are meant to be good at, casters are substantially better.
I think the same 👍
Masteries are kinda supposed to be what changes it
@@slayeroffurries1115 énfasis in "supposed"
This was a problem in 3rd edition, where the power progression was commonly described as "linear fighters, quadratic wizards"
Near the end of 3.5 there was the Book of Nine Swords, a tome which gave us the origin of 5e battlemaster maneuvers, but in 3.5 they were basically spells for swords (they even used the same systems with different names...) By comparison to the baseline 3.5 Fighter, a Warblade from the BoNS was totally unhinged - but it really did close the gap in terms of power. Perhaps the nine swords need to be found again.
I find funny that WotC is the same company that built D&D 4E, that had SO MUCH to offer to melee and ranged fighters in several aspects to give to the martials the feeling of being an hero.
Daily Exploits, Encounter Exploits, Utility Exploits and being able to HELP the other party members and not just "dishing out damage" that actually any other class can ALSO do.
True.
4e deserves more love. I welcome the 4e renaissance
Excellent video; been saying this since the moment I saw Chris' video. A couple additional points;
- Extra accuracy sources are available in team play (or even solo, especially if multiclassing), which boost the -5/+10 build relative to the Graze build. For example, Advantage, Bless, Emboldening Bond, etc. At level 13 I wouldn't be surprised to have a +2 weapon also. Elven Advantage is also a good option at these levels.
- Enemy AC is not always going to be high, since you don't always face single opponents. Multiple opponents have lower CRs each, which mean lower ACs (on average) - sometimes much so. These situations are massively going to favour the -5/+10 build, which helps conserve resoures for the bosses and the like.
I would also argue that the -5/+10 *option* is more interesting play than *always-on* Masteries. Decisions are more interesting than non-decisions.
and this is because kobold had the deference of using champion too. Losing -5/+10 will make precision attack lose A LOT of damage and will almost surely make any kind of BM strictly worse than in 5e
I'm usually on the opposite side of the fence when you and Treantmonk have differing opinions but I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. OneDND Fighters are nice in that they get some defensive features that can stand-in for Lucky and Resilient, but there are no good offensive feats to replace them with.
Ah yes , a Kobolds only weakness... Hot pizza.
I hope it had Gnome as a topping
Gotta love the wholesome and calm exchange between content creators. Internet (and the world in general) needs more of this!
People are so down for the drama that theyre missing the point that Martials need a buff to how they operate at higher levels. I main casters and I see that as a Wizard in 5e I have a fuck ton of options in combat, in exploration, and during Roleplay just through spells. Martials dont get those options outside of base stats. Like, the playtest is sounding more and more likr theyre taking advice from people who have only played from lvls 1-5 and using that to balance the game from lvls 6-20
I main half-casters, usually Rangers, and even Gloom Stalkers fall off after lvl 10 compared to fullcasters who aren't holding themselves back. And since spells represent not only most of the character features in 5e, but they're also the main feature that allows for customization to meet the needs of the campaign, meaning that you'll always be able to contribute. A Fighter or Barbarian that is in a roleplay focused campaign just doesn't have features to adapt to that. And they don't bring anything notable as dmg dealers compared to half-casters in combat focused campaigns.
It's a sad state of affairs. Fighters and Barbarians were just as boring in earlier editions, but t least they weren't weak since martials had established character niches. In 5e and OneD&D, they're boring *and* weak.
@@TheTdroid
I play Eldritch Knight so at lv20. I get one 4th level spell slot and maybe two 6th level spell slots if I take Magic Adept to its maximum stack.
I also prefer to not be limited by two specifically named schools of magic.
In short, the EK needs improvements because 5e EK has issues.
Compared to a Fighter/Wizard Multiclass who can do more and better.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615 EKs have a niche as Eldritch Tanks, but that's about it. There is no singleclass martial that can be stronger than a martial 5 or 6/fullcaster X multiclass.
@@TheTdroid
True
I don't see how martials need a buff. Even lower tier martials already make it through the standard game without too much struggle. Most don't need a buff to survive. The only reason a buff is justified is they are also buffing monsters.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought it was really weird that Treantmonk had his Fighter example at Level 13.
It was to show off all the new things the fighter can do. Weapon masteries, expert, and adept. Showing that the new features can drastically change the game, but it neglected to show if this is the same for early levels.
@@eldinoor7072
Lv20 needs to be tested too since Wotc is very clear that they want campaigns to be around lv20 instead of lv10 for OneDnD.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615which is why Warlocks get Hex as a capstone while Sorcerers get infinite Wish, right?
@@40Found
For better or worst. Since Wotc is trying take make lv20 the new norm instead of lv10 in 5e. More balancing is needed.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615
So... Is WotC trying to make games shorter? Experience gain faster? Like, there is a reason why Level 10 is the norm, and Level 20 is usually a dream. And if this is supposed to still be 5E compatible, how do you reverse engineer it so past campaigns are compatible with this philosophy and design change?
If you were to create a new Champion, what abilitys would you give them? I think the creators need ideas, examples of balance. 🐊
For attacks: Crushing attacks (a "super attack"), counter attacks (retaliating after the effects of being targeted have been resolved), additional damage dice as default just for being a higher level to show mastery over a weapon type, ...
For saving throws: Minor/major Mutilation, Choking, bleeding,
Additions: Martials should be able to get more creative with tools / items, since they mostly can't rely on magic. They should more easily be able to use them, maybe be able to get some more cheaply or produce them cheaply themselves, and apply them more effectively. Poisons suck, but giving a martial the ability to preemptively add it on a weapon as a bonus action, and have it last for a couple of rounds after the first time a coated weapon is used for an attack would be amazing. The idea can be extended for "weapon oils" mimicking conventional or magic effects (i.e. works great against a certain monster type, ignores resistances, adds elemental damage, etc.). Items could be for martials what spell slots are for casters, enhancing their flexibility in combat and allowing them to respond in a variety of ways in addition to what their builds allow.
I think DnD underutilizes items heavily, when just one or two new item mechanics in addition to a few items could make a huge difference - both for combat options, as well as bringing martials closer to casters.
@@stammesbruder Wow thats a lot.
I think the same as you in the items idea, i love Goblin Slayer because of this.
I think that items must have spell like effects, and non casters have to be able to use them more easily.
Also more damage and croud control for the champion is thematic and i like it.
So, the core concept of the Champion is that it's basically entirely passive. I think if you give it active abilities you might as well scrap it entirely and make a new subclass.
But, if it's going to do that, it needs to lean REALLY hard into both what it's doing and the existing Fighter kit.
For the very basics I'd go for something like (in no particular order):
- Recharge a Second Wind when first reduced below 1/2 health each encounter.
- Recharge a Second Wind when passing all death saves (3 successes or a 20).
- Recharge Action Surge when using Second Wind (if this is too strong, limit it to either: while below 1/2 health or if the d10 result is
brute UA
The redesign for champion I use at my table is as follows
- LVL 3: Improved Critical: 19-20 Range, Improves to 18-20 at 7th, 17-20 at 10th, 16-20 at 15th, and 15-20 at 18th.
- LVL 3: Additional Fighting Style.
- LVL 7: Remarkable Athlete.
- LVL 7: Adaptive Style; You can now exchange one of your Fighting Styles after a Short or Long Rest.
- LVL 10: Survivor ~ No longer requires Half HP; Restores Half Fighter Level + Con Modifier. Additionally, You now Recover a use of Indomitable after a Short Rest.
- LVL 15: Mastery of Arms; You may now exchange one of your fighting styles when initiative is rolled.
- LVL 18: Improved Survivor ~ HP Restoration occurs even if the fighter is at 0 HP; And Recover a use of Indomitable when Initiative is Rolled.
The idea is to scale the most iconic feature, the improved crit range, to a point of consistency - And keeping that idea of consistency a primary focus for the Subclass. Due to being able to swap its fighting styles around, a champion can be more reliable than other martials - even if it is not as strong as them. Its also important IMO to keep it simple/forgiving to play
Fighting in claustrophobic Underground and Need to block a doorway or hall? Adopt Defensive fighting style and improve your doorway dodging.
Fighting in the open plains and Enemies are often too far away to charge the first round? Swap to Archery fighting style and pick them off with your bow.
Entering Town and aren't expecting a fight? Swap to Superior Technique and poach the Silver Tongue Maneuver.
The Regeneration from Survivor upgrade makes it so the Champion enters every fight at full health, nothing strange for a party working with good out of combat healing. And the upgrade at level 18 Makes the Champion nearly unkillable through damage, which is more than fair for a capstone IMO considering what casters get at the same level.
The damage upgrade is far from anything crazy, crit fishing is still bad, but due to the consistency - This champion benefits considerably from advantage, even more so than most GWM builds (2 Barb levels?). They may also prefer different magic items, adding a die to damage is often more valuable than a bonus to hit. At mid to high level, some players have tried working both Sharpshooter and GWM on a single build
Ya, figured the point was that at BEST martials haven't changed much. They still require feats, they are doing very close to the same dmg. They still are worse than your choice of summon, life goes on.
Yet another edition of caster and half-caster meta
I remember Jeremy saying why they remove the -5/+10 features in GWM & SS. is cuz he said that he want the damage to come from the main class. So the fact that they are testing the new fighter with all those feats makes no sense, as the old fighter had feats too. Testing the 6e fighter with the feats just show that feats will absolutely be MANDATORY to take, specifically the same PAM/SS/CBE/GWM feats.
They either need to test both 5e and 6e fighters without any feats. Or they need to do a test with the 5e fighter with all the GWM/PAM SS/CBE feats, and the 6e fighter (((Without))) the feats. This will tell us if the Class Alone is "Dishing Out The Damage".
This is the chillest, most nerd-math heavy crosstown rivalry of all time.
I've been watching you both and I agree with . . . you both.
Chris explained that Fighters are dealing more damage than they were in 5e, and they are - the feats giving a +1 bonus to STR and DEX make them more appealing than a straight ASI, and they work really well with the weapon mastery builds.
Your argument is that casters are still more powerful. And yes, Sorcerer's got decent buffs, wizards got a buff, and the fact that spells are just great features overall add to a spellcaster's power outside of combat.
Both of you are arguing different points - and they are both correct. One DnD has buffed things up for a majority of classes - including fighters dealing more damage. However, the base issue of casters just being more powerful overall due to spells doesn't seem to have been checked by the design team.
The mutually exclusive point of disagreement you missed seems to be that Chris implied that Fighters in general are much improved overall, while Kobold claims the FLOOR is improved, but the CEILING has lowered.
The latter isn't an improvement, it's a side grade.
Although for your average, non-optimized table, it's a significant upgrade and that will likely impact feedback.
The issue is that some amount of disbalance has to exist in order to preserve a sense of realism and fun for casters. It would be very strange in a modern era roleplaying game if your max level hacker couldn’t hack banks in order to balance them with the wages of a server at a restaurant. To a certain extent, when you complain about the options that casters have, you are bringing a similar complaint to the fore. This isn’t to say that servers should make more money, they absolutely do, by several orders of magnitude, just that there has to be reasonable limits on expectation. Casters are reality hackers, by definition. Just as it would invite a lot of questions for a max tier hacker to be unable to hack a bank, it is similarly strange to need casters to be unable to reality hack in ways that, by definition, are going to be balance breaking to some degree.
@@adammyers3453 No one is saying casters shouldn't be able to "hack reality." But you can have them be magically powerful and feel magically powerful WITHOUT absolutely shitting on martials in comparison. Just look at Pathfinder 2e, or hell, look at 5e compared to One D&D.
The fact that they gave all these full spellcasters so many buffs is utterly absurd, there is NO ONE who thought spellcasters were weak or "unable to hack banks" in 5e.
@@Lardo137 Yet wizards can’t craft new spells in 5e, in that sense they can’t “hack reality”. That ability made elements of pathfinder unbalanced, precisely the elements being criticized here. In 4e, the spell wish didn’t even exist, and nearly all the “reality hacking” capabilities were turned into rituals (with no mechanism for wizards to research new spells). Yes, that is exactly what some say about wizards, and as long as spell research exists as a mechanic, there will be that gulf.
If you carefully read my post, however, you will find that I am not arguing that all imbalance is ok. Actually, I agree that martials need a boosts, and need it badly. Martials should be more powerful, and I agree that the gulf in its current state is unacceptable. However, I am criticizing those who argue that wizards having access to spell research is too powerful (some actually say this). It is that specific claim that I am countering (something to note, the first attempt at giving wizards spell research is a cap on spell research potential. The calls for wizards to be denied something core to the fantasy are apparently large enough, that the designers specifically decided to add the mechanic, but only in a very narrow prescribed way [there is no other rule for PCs to craft spells]). We are complaining that wizards can have the basic ability to use their downtime to create unique new spells, despite that being a core fantasy of the class, an aspect denied for 2 editions now).
Treant and kobold make for a great party.
This video is a breath of fresh air. Love that you address/update the information and the opinion of the material. Keep up the amazing work Pack Tactics!
You bring up a good point. We do not know how monsters will be revised. It’s clear that the monsters in the Monster Manual are weak as heck compared to the later builds after Tosha’s, etc. after level 2 I basically have to homebrew the heck out of everything or sometimes double the amount of baddies to make my players consider the fight worth their time.
Treantmonk has some quality information in his videos, but good gravy are they a slog to sit through. I use them to help me fall asleep for naps more than anything.
Hot take: while WotC screws over the warlock, partially, the solution for many of the problems of the martial/caster balance is to use pact magic esque spell progression. If instead of having more and more and more and more spell slot, the spell slots evolved with the class, casters would still be the cannon, but with only one bullet. Making casters to have, IDK, 6-8 spell slots and they advance by leveling up one or two spell slots per level, then no more shield spamming, no more fireball spamming, and no more 6 encounter a day, while at the same time retaining the fantasy of powerful magic.
They seriously need to make shield add your spellcasting ability modifier instead of a flat +5 and only for the turn you used it. That way, it's still a defense against multiattack (unlike defensive duelist sad) but it's not protection for the whole round
@@saeedrazavi4428 or give Martials and option to do the Parry reaction many NPCs have, where they add their PB to their AC (in my game i have a shield type that doesnt give you the +2, but gives you this ability)
@@matheusfiorelli8829 no, only NPCs can have cool martial things, martial players are there to be dirt peasants who don't know how to actually fight
@@FarremShamist Martials are the jocks who bullied the nerds at school, therefore they need to suck compared to the big brain wizards... :P
Im loving this 5e nerds youtube multiverse. Packed tactics, bilbron, d4 colby, dungeon dudes and sensei treantmonk you all GREAT
I too recommend Treantmonk's Trickery Cleric guide. It's the first videos I watched from him, when all the other guides were essentially "Use another subclass".
I love Treantmonk's videos. His homebrew fix to Monk is quite good, and I actually got to briefly play it. But I admit I was confused by how he presented the Champion fighter in the playtest 5 packet, because it seemed to be promoting them as good. Yet, they appeared to be barely better than in 5e currently, where they're wildly sub-optimal. I was also surprised that he didn't provide a DPR chart from 1-13. Picking only level 13 seemed... tone deaf to the situation, and also a bit cherry-picking a good result. I know there will probably be tricks and tech we don't know about yet, and we shouldn't oversell our ability to completely assess the game. Maybe crit fishing will become more powerful somehow, or martials will have unique synergy with new features and abilities. I can already tell that the extra Nick attack across the board will make a huge difference once martials have access to any light weapon with on-hit damage. Even 1d4 fire damage on a hit becomes significant when you're potentially hitting with it twice per turn and STILL swinging a Halberd twice with a Cleave or shooting a Hand Crossbow twice, all at level 5. But now Fighters have to juggle weapons to achieve this, which also means their performance TANKS if their DM isn't throwing myriad optimal weapons at the Fighter alone. They would need three magic weapons of specific types by level 5 or they get dunked. All this, to still be outshone by casters who are simple, straightforward and don't rely on any magic items at all.
Martials need some serious love and BOLD buffs that take risks during playtest while the strongest spells see small and thoughtful nerfs. Not some cautious, hesitant tweaking to make martials more 'fun' while casters get sent to the moon by comparison. No matter how cool or thematic martial abilities are, it's not going to matter when casters by comparison are walking all over them. Those early levels are only going to look good because that's when martials are at their strongest by comparison AND because most of the best spells at early levels are to buff and enable martials to perform vastly better than they normally would with Goodberry soaking chip damage, Bless/Faerie Fire creating huge DPR gains and Sleep swinging the action economy and setting up easy hits with free crits. As soon as those spell slots become better used on Shield, Absorb Elements and Pass Without Trace, martials fall behind even more since they're (usually) no longer the focus of the casters' strategy. Push might help a little, but it would require a LOT of team cooperation and building. My experience is that MOST tables do not pick their classes and spells around a cooperative team fight strategy.
You and Treantmonk are my favorite D&D channels. I listen to a few others occasionally, but its 90% you guys. Using good maths in D&D vids is optimal.
BUT KOBOLD!!
This doesn't agree with my point therefore your math has to be wrong!
I think that weapon masteries are fun complications that do not address the real problems with martial classes. They are really just a small boost to the weapons themselves. What the martial classes need are more feature slots to allow them to progress harder and faster.
What I am doing at my table currently is I have gotten rid of "Extra Atrack" as a feature and made it a Game Rule. Now you gain an extra attack at the same levels a cantrip scales up, assuming you are proficient with that weapon.
This is a boost to all martials or mixed martial classes but more importantly frees up the level 5 feature slot to become a more interesting feature that could give classes a defining thing to do as they advance into the next tier of play.
Currently, I have not gone through and designed a feature for every class. For now generally, have it be an extra ASI/feat opportunity. I have designed something specifically for fighter due to them having more extra attack features, because I have given all characters 4 attacks at level 20.
It is not a Nerf, it is just less optimization focused, which is actually perfect for the groups I play with, power feats, should be free or just not exist. They limit Martial Fantasy, but I completely agree Martials need much more, basically, I like the direction, but I think they didn't push enough
I gotta say i really love this basically back and forth of you and Chris. It's very respectful and the different perspectives are useful. Keep up the good work!
Love how the strongest way to play a melee fighter is still to allow the wizard to decide your character's features for you.
the reason for level 13 is that most games don't go past that level, so it is a better example of where the players tend to cap out at, it was explained back in a video where he goes over his methodology.
But I do agree that testing it at multiple levels is a good die and when I used to do this kind of thing in 3e I would usually take 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th and 20th level for my data sets.
If it wasn’t obvious, the reason Chris is picking L13 is that is the level the champion gets the ability to pick between two weapon master abilities at the time of hit. This lets him pick either cleave or graze depending on whether it is a hit or a miss, which adds quite a bit of dependable damage and average damage overall. To see this, what we really need is a optimized D&D one vs D&D 5e champion builds over a bunch of levels.
The argument is there that the slight buff to mid-level Fighters/Barbarians in terms of damage makes single-classing in them more valuable than before, sure. But as said, it's an incredibly flawed argument for multiple reasons:
1) The buff to DPR is tied partially to the change in the feat system than anything done by the base class (free feat at level 1 in addition to the bonus feat from human, higher level feats all being half-ASIs).
2) The buffs are only really there at higher levels (10+) that a lot of campaigns don't tend to reach and is just to damage, which really wasn't all that much of an issue to begin with, which ties into the biggest point...
3) The argument only considers the comparison between martial classes or a martial class to a previous iteration of the same class, rather than the real issue of comparing it to *every* other class.
You can argue that comparing a fighter to a wizard or barbarian to sorcerer is an apples and oranges situation, but it's a comparison that will come up in the playerbase - they are both still fruit after all - and to ignore that side of the argument only works against the point being made and doesn't work to decrease the divide. Because really, who cares about a minor DPR uptick for a fighter/barbarian compared to the 5e versions at 13th+ level when wizards, sorcerers, and clerics too (in case people forgot) got massive new abilities and buffs with little to no nerfs to their abilities and not just at level 10 and beyond but in some cases right out of the starting gates?
whos gonna win? the smoll cute math-lizard or one angry guy with a calculator?
Lol Chris is the least angry guy. I do love me some math lizard tho
At level 13 playtest Warlock's highest spell slot is 4 so they can up cast hex to 2d6. Between them and their simulacrum that's 14 less DPR putting them well behind the fighter numbers. Also there's a pretty heavy resource cost to even reach those numbers.
Honestly, I think the core issue between martial and caster balance is that there are certain high level spells that are bananas. Simulacrum is casually mentioned in the video because Simulacrum is incredibly, game-bendingly broken when allowed to operate unchecked and the theoretical checks on it get hand-waved in dpr discussions because it's really hard to factor in gold costs and enemy dispel magic on a spreadsheet. When it's working it does things to the action economy that will get you investigated by the Hague. Simulacrum, and the handful of similarly unhinged spells, are at the core of the perceptions about how vast the martial/caster divide is.
Even low and mid level spells are bananas. Silence can hard-counter certain enemies. Fireball can easily deal more than 50 dmg if placed well. Banishment can remove triple digit hp from a fight on a charisma save. Spirit Guardians is decent DPR, slows enemies and frees up your action economy to do things like Dodge for better tanking. Pass Without Trace can not only let you do stealth missions, but also generate surprise rounds worth hundreds of dmg. Stoneskin will let a caster turn anyone into a Barbarian for an hour. And this is just a drop in the bucket.
@@TheTdroid As someone who likes playing a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass, Shield is a first level reaction to boost your AC by five for a whole round, Healing Word is a first level bonus action to raise a dying party member at range, and Misty Step is a second level bonus action teleportation.
Hypnotic Pattern is a fight ender.
Oh god I need to share that quote.
Simulacrum: "When it's working it does things to the action economy that will get you investigated by the Hague."
Thank you for mentioning the dps comparison for Level 5! Calculating level 13? How is my party carrying me for that long with such low early numbers? Martials are stuck relying on DMs giving quality magic items early.
Martials need some form of trait, feat to choose and/ or have baked into the base class ( even half classes/ casters to a degree ). Sub classes can amplify/ specialize. What I mean of WHAT kind of traits/ feats???? Resistance to one or more tupes of magic/ elemental/ psionic attacks, heck even immunity in a particular martial/ half class higher levels vs one or more magic mumbojumbos. Also counter/ reflect/ redirect magic traits/ feats with some form of natural/ non magical armor, weapons. Mirrors anyobe? Magic/ psionic nullifiers etc.
(Quick note - we are always talking damage and not the issues with skills and defense and support and the other Pilar’s of play that mages can trivialize while others struggle. We never should forget how powerful these things are or we risk messing up and printing a Twilight powerhouse… oh that was them and note no lots of damage 😂. Let’s talk some damage)
The increasing the min and mean and decreasing the maximum is really common in this play test. The reason they are doing it is to limit the swing that characters have in damage output that can surprise DMs and make the creature less challenging then the CR says they should be. (That is them but me I know this is stupid - Dragon brained you know).
Chris is right and so are you. The biggest issue I noted over there (no one noticed there or here because .. wall of text) the biggest issue of that people will not see any increase in the numbers because it is hidden and does not appear when a person looks at a maximum result.
Also, an issue even greater then standard damage but more along the line of loosing play styles, multiplayer is not going to be keeping players around since it will be VERY un useful in the standard game that does by level 10. And in the end all of this is to make it so that they can calculate CR easier.
Well that is my E for your video. Don’t forget to feed the gator and keep enjoying your pizza.
Thanks for making this video Kobold. It really clarifies your position from your last video.
I always love videos where you and Chris talk about each other. I think you're not like super close friends, but I really enjoy watching your dynamic as friendly optimizer channel neighbors.
2:38 Objection! A 13th level warlock can not cast hex at 5th level due to their half caster progression.
Honestly I’m not too worried about martial damage. Damage is neat, but my problem with martials is that they just aren’t interesting to play. They are too limited, especially when you see what other systems do with them - not just pathfinder, but older editions of dnd as well (4e in particular comes to mind)
I would love a rework of martials, but we're clearly not getting that from OneD&D. So the only thing left is putting out good numbers and they just don't =(
Guess we're in for another decade of Ranger and Paladin being the only martial characters worth using.
My god nothing infuriates me more than seeing what they did to Martial Classes going out of 4e. Good friend of mine just shrugged, dropped playing D&D at all and outright told me "I refuse to go from having Fighter finally mean something to being trash again." This is a man who went through 3.5 up to Book of Nine Swords, rejoiced and his only lament was that actual Fighter would never be worth playing when Warblade existed. Then saw 4e's Fighter and literally never did the same build twice because he kept setting up new combos within that singular class he enjoyed playing. He outright went to Warlord because it was a fun way to 'be Fighter, again' and did more crazy non-sense with that than anyone expected was possible. Ended up getting the Martial Power books and continuing to put together new builds with just Fighter and/or Warlord until seeing 5e and sending me that classic meme. "Look how they massacred my boy!" from the Godfather. I couldn't blame him for saying 'screw this' after seeing an edition where Fighter finally meant something other than 'NPC/Mob'. 'OneD&D' is essentially doubling down on pushing casters to obscene power, Wizards beyond 3.5 for Erathis's sake! While leaving the martial classes to lick at crumbs like a whipped dog.
@@Sorain1 It's a shame. And I don't get it; so many other systems manage to give different classes different things they're good at, so why not D&D?
I think a lot of the problem is actually the community and the backlash to 4e. 4e seems to have been a poor system to run at tabletop, but they had a lot of good ideas I wish were brought into 5e, like clearly and narrowly defined class roles. With 12 base classes, it is a big problem to have as much overlap as we do now.
Martials need more free feats and more feats to choose from. Not necessarily to boost their damage but to boost their utility and control on the battlefield and dare I say it... Off the battlefield.
Since casters get entire lists of class features to choose from (because thats what spells actually are) martials should get the same treatment. Instead of spell lists they need ability lists. And some of those abilities need to scale with level, if not through damage then through utility.
Cleave is a good template for these types of martial feats to start, but I'm also thinking stuff like Barbarians should get bonus action shoves and headbutts. Fighters could get shoves and trips as bonus actions. Any kickboxer can tell you getting a few good low kicks in should halve your movement speed or even stop you from walking all together. And called shots have been a new player favorite that is not in the game but should be. You 1000% can actually attack the eyes of someone. Especially in a grapple. Getting more bonusses to hit would also greatly help and fit with being an experienced martial character. Being in range of a DnD martial should be TERRIFYING for any foe. Their primary drawbacks should be that they need to get up close to be effective, so how effective they are should be amplified as a result.
So in DND 3.5, they had the Tome of Battle. That introduced martial Stances and strikes. That may be something worth bringing back for martials.
In my expierence in a low to mid optimised table, martials do more single target damage, but even barely optimied caster can take out a few enemies out of the fight with a good timed spell. That is why ONE D&D changes in the latest UA frustrate my so much. Yes fighter has a little more to do besides just rolling to hit, but wizard is on a whole another level. They really need to rethink those changes.
New warlock does not allow for you to upcast hex if it's level 5th by level 13
I didn’t think so, either. They have 4th level spells at level 13.
Class feature concept for Fighters (and Barbarians, but mostly for Fighters)
Vicious Onslaught: allows the character to perform any number of attacks on a single enemy, the downside being that each attack performed this way will reduce AC by 1 for the remainder of the round.
To perform a vicious onslaught in a timely manner, roll damage once, and roll a number of d20s equal to the number of attacks, then just count how many beat the target's AC and multiply the damage roll by that number. This ability may only target one enemy per turn, and can only be performed with a melee weapon.
This idea stems from the fact that, if you are fully committed to attacking a single target, literally anyone can do more attacks than a level 1 fighter IRL. remember that 1 turn is 6 seconds (which in a fight viewed through the lens of adrenaline, is a reeeeeaaaaaaallllllyy loong time.) realistically, fighters should have a lot more attacks (at least when that's all that they're doing.)
Moving, drinking potions, etc. can eat up a lot of that time, but when fighters get in their desired positions, most do nothing but attack for their whole turn, and at low levels, having a single attack that may or may not hit, meanwhile casters are able to do things that deal a minimum of half damage whether the roll succeeds or not, is dumb.
0:40 "by the way I burnt the roof of my mouth so if I sound weird that's why"
As opposed to when you normally talk weird?😂😂😂
I still believe Martials should have social utility. Like Barbarians depending on their subclass being considered by the people as protectors, leaders, or monsters.
Or Fighters being considered Rock Stars, Generals, Leaders, etc.
Imagine a Totem Barbarian adding their STR mod. to their charisma checks if the NPC lives on the forest or skirts of a town.
While a Champion Fighter has their STR/DEX mod. to any charisma check if the NPC is on the heart of a City or against soldiers.
Fantastic video, love the methods you use here. Only small thing I disagree with is the 100% charger uptime. There will be times when there are other nearby enemies that can punish your movement with AoOs, and you won't want to risk the extra damage, especially if it comes with riders. I still think it deserves ~80% uptime or so, but just because you can use it every turn doesn't mean you'll want to.
Thumbnail is amazing lol. A treentmonk with a bunch of old calculators and swords is a sight to behold.
I genuinely feel they should have just given all fighters battlemaster maneuvers on top of masteries. Technically all warriors get masteries. But the others get something on top of masteries (rage and ki). Give the fighters manuevers!
Player: I want to eat pizza
DM: okay you buy a pizza, that's 1 silver
Player: is it delicious
DM: oh it's delicious alright...
Player: ...
DM: you take 1d4 fire damage from eating it too fast
Personally, I would be comparing classes at or around 6th level. This I find is right in the middle of most campaign professions
Aside from it being unlucky, I was actually okay with his picking level 13. Our campaigns generally end around the 12-13 level range, so that wasn't too high. I do agree with you that seeing the numbers at a couple of other points below 13 would have been more informative and might have even told a different story. And running the numbers for range would have been nice too, especially because the fighter (so far) is the only one with ranged mastery.
Level 13 is unhelpful without context. Ideally, Treantmonk should've done lvl 3, 5 and 13. If he was only going to do one of those, it should've been 5, since that is the number that is most likely to define most of your adventure.
It feels like the issue is that you guys were looking at different things. He's comparing old to new which is clearly a buff. But didn't really compare how it bridged the martial caster divide.
To be fair, how it bridges the martial - caster divide is literally the only thing that matters since the new Fighter / Barb isn't competing with the old ones. They're competing with new casters and half-casters.
I’m glad someone is finally acknowledging how bad ranged fighters are in OD&D. I get that ranged combat is inherently better than melee but it’s still leagues below casting.
100℅ agree I was shocked by his math. Love both channels but it felt really odd.
Awesome breakdown! Love these sorts of videos.
Also 7:27 Figher.
In practice the fighter built for range with crossbow expert will still do more damage on average because of all the times the enemy will be out of range of melee. Maybe they just figure that most spellcasters have much better things to do than deal out damage so it won't matter if they technically can do more damage since they probably won't be?
Not to mention the amount of damage melee takes just in the process of getting there.
Not to mention how much control spells/abilities hurt melee way more than ranged.
This was a classy response. Thanks for this! 💛
Short of a complete rework of how martial and caster characters work (kinda like 4e did. Strange how 4e seems to have solved most of the issues we're having today and then got rejected by the community), there isn't much we can do with martial characters that don't have spellcasting beyond giving them better numbers. And 50 dpr at lvl 13 for a character that has nothing but damage is worthless. It only seems impressive because we're coming out of an edition where characters without spellcasting got little to no love from WotC.
The funny thing is that Rangers were underwhelming in the 2014 PHB, but I'd still rank a singleclass Hunter with only PHB options higher than any singleclass Fighter build, even with the newer subclasses, as a more overall useful character. And Rangers have been buffed several times since then to get them more up to par with Paladins, be it by offering better class features, more powerful spells and one of the strongest martial subclasses in the game. Buffs that were needed, mind you. But the classes without magic hasn't gotten anything like that and they needed it more than anyone.
My games START at level 10 (level 5 at the earliest) and it allows martials to be played and fun multiclasses and fun backstories and more fun everything. I have a sorcerer barbarian dwarf, a paladin fighter rune night fairy. All sorts of stuff. I couldnt imagine a more fun way to play. Still allows for going through 10 whole levels but gives the powerful stuff at the end.
Love Scotland the brave in the background
Hear me out right, I think somone once said something about fighter that made me think about how it could be improved. Combined with someone recently pointing out that a big flaw in martial is lack of versatility or choice, and that they're very one dimensional, I had an idea. What if all fighter subclasses we just battlemaster and whatever other subclass they get? Maybe expand the maneuvers to be more versatile, with stronger ones unlocking as you level up? I think that would fix a significant number of their problems, and give the players far more choice, even if it doesn't fix them, its a relatively easy boost in power that closes the gap significantly.
One thing that kinda worries me about weapon masteries is that we only get a handful here and only the fighter can mix and match them. I feel like this doesn't leave the door open to add more masteries down the line and one of the big things martials are lacking right now is choices. Meanwhile casters are getting new spells in almost every other book
So One D&D is like having JJ Abrams do a film for your franchise - there's going to be power creep that breaks the IP.
are there other movies that fit the description or is this just a star wars joke without saying star wars
@@Hazel-xl8in ,
He also did some Star Trek movies before he did Star Wars... in those movies he also increased the power and size of all ships... so that the New Enterprise in those movies was nearly twice the size of the Enterprise in the Original Series... despite his movies being set ~20 years prior to the Original Series, lol.
He also destroyed a planet in Star Trek too... he really loves his planet killing weapons.
How is the level 13 onednd warlock getting a 5th level hex? They couldn’t have more than a lvl 3 slot then
5:00 I never thought about triggering Charge by "ringing around the rosie", but RAW it does work (the fact I didn't even consider it makes me think it's not RAI, but I don't know)! That's interesting.
Wow, mom look I’m on the tv! Glad you liked the meme :)
I do think that perhaps there is room for fighter to grow with different subclasses. A champion's damage may be slightly better, but it's also got a lot of predominantly tanky abilities that focus on staying alive.
The base fighter seems a decent framework to add subclasses on, and have those subclasses impact how they play more than feats do.
If they release a new subclass and call it "Skirmisher" or something, and suddenly they can dual-wield extremely well and make extra attacks with their attack action, they could make it potent enough to deal with what seems like low damage right now.
The only way I could comprehend calculating Topple is by calculating what each combinations of dice roll (Ex. The damage for a 16 on attack roll and an 8 on their save then a 18 on your next attack) then averaging those number. But that seems like a lot of work 😭
I hope the pain goes away soon!
Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have stronger melee builds out of casters that martials again. Barbarians are kinda interesting being able to use strength for perception which is hilarious to me though😂
"they need real food" made me laugh so hard
Based on watching your videos there's no way to make martials better.
There are ways, just not the ones that they are taking. Past editions had amazing martials.
I'm happy someone keeps pointing out how minor buffs are for martials for this situation.
god martials have shit.
With the 13th level fighter feature, it looks like you choose the weapon mastery feature before you know if you hit (it might even be before you roll, but hard to tell because of the bad wording) which means you won't get full benefits of cleave and graze (or any two features)
Wouldn't the warlock do better damage by casting Simulacrum on the fighter instead of themselves?
Of course, that would be a dick move. "You think you do more damage than me? Ok now I do my damage AND your damage"
Well, like he said, it is a lazy warlock =p
We need monsters that consume spell slots and tailor an entire campaign around them. If the supposed weakness of casters is 'running out of gas' then we have to capitalize on that
I would like to point out the following:
Kobold forgot the fact that fighters get a feat at lvl 5 amd the variant human from Onednd also gets two feats instead of one. Do the same comparison with a piercer fighter, which does add an additional damage die on crits and allows for a weapon dice reroll once per turn.
Kobold also forgot the new feats are all half feats, meaning sharpshooter, CE, and Piercer increase Dex by +1. And with the OneDnD human having the ability to put a +2 in its dex stat, statting with a 15 from point buy, and getting +3 from the feats, the new fighter gets a 20 at lvl 4, with one feat to do whatever with.
Also isnt the accuracy loss to sharpshooter 25%, not 20%? And advantage gain being 25% and not 20% if we start at a base 65% chance to hit at lvl 5 (with a 16 in dex I may add), then wouldnt the SS drop the accuracy to 40? And the adv increase the accuracy to 80? Technically 90% accuracy with the 20 in dex from the other feats. The calculations just feel wrong, but I also may be wrong.
All that being said, the martial and casters do still have a divide, albeit the divide is only as strong as you make it. Reduce magic items given to casters, increase magic items given to martials, reduce free-moving gold as that is the biggest gate for a wizard to achieve its godlike status, and tweak the masteries a bit so they are actually better. Also make power attacks just a thing that players can do instead of needing a feat to do it. That should help minimize the divide some.
@@gloryrod86 not to mention of we take into consideration of how many turns it would take to make a simulacrum, and multiply the damage of the champion fighter, which would be 6000 turns times 50 damage (low balling the number, then the warlock would need to make up for 300.000 damage, which with the 10 points of difference that the combo would give the warlock, they would need to eldritch blast a total of 30.000 turns, which means they would need to blast for a total of 5 hours, and that is if they can keep Hex up for that long and the simulacrum does not die before then. Not to mention simulacrums do not get their spells back ever and have half the health of the original.
I hate to say this since it's been said to death, but all martials need some kind of answer to spells. A lot of people don't seem to understand that spells are basically additional features for casters in of themselves. each spell a caster can prepare is an additional feature that martial characters don't have access to. add to that, casters are also going to have a few higher mental stats then your martials are likely to have since martials are going to need either STR or DEX for for combat. CON is also one you might want to have at least a +2 in. but the Casters get to bank on either INT, WIS, or CHA which are great for roll play. I'd say wizards needs something similar to the Battle Master maneuvers and apply them to all martial classes. honestly even then that won't be enough but it's at least a step in the right direction.
Someone call Colby
Respectfully, the problem with fighters is NOT their DPR. Its their verstitility in comparison to casters. Rather than giving the fighter classes non-magical skills comparable to casters (or making them equally available) they limit fighters or force most strong builds to have to dip into cantips and spellcasting. When something like the rangers spells could have easily just been considered "fighting techniques." Allow a fighter to do a swirling iron whirlwind attack and strike all targets surrounding him (Sword Burst). Alllow the Fighter to move so quickly that they become difficult to target (Blur spell, etc). Just following the Battle Master approach but standardizing it for the entire class and greatly improving the power of fighting techniques would make them more appealing and fun to play. The PROBLEM with the Fighter is at high level the Mage can do 100 things and the fighter just does more damage and is tougher. Its very, very, very, clear (especially from the subclasses) that martial classes are not as favored by the designers as the magic users. Very little thought goes into them.
I've said a lot that it often feels like casters and martials are playing two different genres of game. Casters, especially high level ones, are out there playing a high-flying fantasy adventure anime game whereas martials are playing a gritty realistic survival game where you gotta remember to fuckin sharpen your sword with a whetstone or it'll break.
If high level wizards can summon meteors, I want fighters who can cut a meteor in half. I want barbarians who can catch the meteor and throw it back. I want rogues who can snipe the wizard from the other side of the city before he finishes the spell.
It's stupid that the coolest thing WotC can think of when it comes to living out the fantasy of being a peerless warrior is being able to swing your sword three times in six seconds instead of just two.
I guess I'm spoiled if most campaigns you've played end at level 10 because mine have started at 3 and 5 and we plan on ending at 20 before starting new campaigns (probably not using One D&D)
What I find out discussing is that casters out perform martials in things as jump's and run distance. Also mele should do more DMG that range to be balanced. Also some skills for Shields whood be nice.
Just do what they do in pf2e, make martial have +2 to hit compared to casters. Also have control spells weaken monsters instead of just turning them off.
the best fighter class, in my opinion, is the Echo Knight. It doesn't add any gains to DPS but it has a lot of flavor and is really fun to play.
What are you on about, Unleash Incarnation literally gives you an extra attack...
@@Rubisco2510 I forgot about that. I've only played an echo knight once and it was a lot of fun. It does not put out the consistent damage most casters do, though.
@@stevenbyers8747 the cookie-cutter way of doing damage as a Fighter is to find a way to get advantage and combine that with -5/+10 feats. For example as Barbarian 2 echo knight 6 you could attack at advantage 7 times each hit doing a lot of damage. However, it was a bit restirictive in weapon choice and wasn't the best design.
I'm more of an Eldritch Knight guy myself. Sure, no innate dpr boosts, but at least I get spells and cantrips to diversify what my Fighter can do, and I can build a very sturdy defensive character.
I think the comparison with a lazy warlock with Simulacrum is a bit misleading. If that warlock wanted to do better, he should copy the fighter with Simulacrum, not himself. The DPR would be higher. I think it's telling that if all you want to do is damage that doesn't cost any resources (simulacra don't regain spell slots, so that doesn't sound like a bad idea at all), then copying the fighter and not yourself is a better choice.
But, PackTactics mentionned it in a previous video, but it's still really hard to actually evaluate whether the martial/caster divide has grown narrower or wider until we know what changes they're making to spells.
I think i heard you giving that solution before: Just give fighters more (superiority ?) dices to roll with weapons, or some extra resistances or movement. At least fighters should be harder to kill than casters?
Marital should get more physical habilities to do in or out of combat. Stuff like special movements, jumps, manuvers etc
Just like those martial heroes from movies
The biggest issue between balance of martials vs casters is campaign early/mid/late campaign scaling. And that the players want two separate things out of dnd.
My opinion. Scale caters and martials the same though-out the campaign. Because most don’t get that far and players shouldnt have to wait soo long to play
I mean, your analysis are always EXCEL HEAVY. But you are not counting the shenaningan magic.